From Boeing's situation in China to the possibility of life on the moon – Here are today's Headlines

To start off, we're looking into:

Boeing's skyward goals in China

The backstory: China is a major player in the aviation world, ranking as the world's second-largest market after the US. And when it comes to making planes, Boeing is a household name. It was a go-to choice for Chinese airlines like China Eastern, China Southern and Air China.

But then, things got rough for Boeing after two devastating accidents involving its best-selling model, the 737 Max, in 2018 and 2019. Sadly, 346 people lost their lives. It turns out there were some design flaws in the flight control software, and Beijing was quick to ground the Boeing jets alongside other countries like the US, the UK and the EU. This was a heavy blow to the firm, especially in China, where it had a significant presence and business.

The development: Now, Boeing is finally making a comeback after the challenges with its 737 Max planes. In January, the Max finally made its first passenger flight in China again after nearly four years. Click the link here for more.

Wanda's IPO rollercoaster

The backstory: Wang Jianlin is a Chinese billionaire who founded the conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group, commonly known as Wanda, back in 1988. It's into all sorts of stuff like real estate, entertainment, hotels and shopping malls. One of its subsidiaries, Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management Group, focuses on managing shopping malls and commercial properties. Wang wanted to take it public through an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong. But things haven't gone as smoothly as he had hoped.

The development: The company has missed not one, not two, but three deadlines to list shares of its management unit in Hong Kong. March was a huddle for the firm when Chinese regulators sent a letter to Wanda's mall unit, asking why the sale was delayed.

Wang has faced some financial challenges in the past few years, with his US$40 billion (at its peak) withering down to US$6.6 billion. Now the company's scrambling to get back on track. Click the link here for more.

Japan’s nuclear wastewater dump

The backstory: Back in 2011, Japan experienced a catastrophic earthquake that destroyed parts of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, including its cooling systems. Three of the reactors then ended up melting and releasing radiation. Newer tanks have been storing water since then, but they’ll reach capacity next year. The nuclear plant is still damaged and needs to be cleaned up, so that water has to go somewhere. What should Japan then do with the radioactive water that’s inside these tanks?

The development: In 2021, the country came up with a plan to release this water into the ocean over about 30 years. The plan involves treating the wastewater and diluting it with a huge amount of seawater before releasing it into the Pacific Ocean about a kilometer from the coast via an underground tunnel. But local fishing industries and a lot of nearby countries have pretty big concerns about this plan. Click the link here for more.

To end, we'll look into:

Could there actually be life on the moon?

Most people don’t really believe in the existence of moon aliens. And, while little green humanoid creatures probably aren’t roaming around the moon, that doesn’t mean there’s no life up there at all.

"One of the most striking things our team has found is that, given recent research on the ranges in which certain microbial life can survive, there may be potentially habitable niches for such life in relatively protected areas on some airless bodies," Prabal Saxena, a planetary researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, recently told Space.com.

When NASA’s Artemis 3 astronauts land on the moon (hopefully by 2025), they’ll be doing more fieldwork to see if it’s habitable for any kind of life.

Click the link here for more on what they're looking for.

In other news ...

🔢Numbers:

• The Dow Jones rose 0.43% to 34,212.12.
• The Nasdaq Composite jumped 0.83% to 13,573.32.
• The S&P 500 climbed 0.69% to 4,369.01.
• The Hang Seng Index moved up 0.6% to 19,521.42.
• Brent oil settled up 3.4% to $74.29 per barrel.
• The 10-year Treasury Yield made some big gains, soaring 1.97% to 38.39 at the time of writing.
• At the time of writing, bitcoin is at US$25,930.20.

📉Market snapshot and key quotes:

• In the US: Wall Street rallied on Tuesday, fueled by new inflation data that showed a slowdown in price pressures during May. Investors were optimistic that the Fed might hold off on a rate hike on Wednesday.
• In Hong Kong: Hong Kong stocks closed on a high note as investors bet that the Fed won't be hiking interest rates this week.

📊Top gainers/losers and company news:

• In the US: US-listed Chinese companies saw a boost, with Alibaba's stock all revved up, gaining 1.9%, while JD.com jumped 3.5%. Chipmaker Intel also saw a 2.5% gain. Rumor has it the company is in discussions with SoftBank Group Corp's Arm Ltd. to secure a significant stake in its upcoming IPO.
• Tech giant Oracle climbed 0.2% and felt extra cheery after serving up an upbeat quarterly revenue report and an optimistic forecast.
• In Hong Kong: Chinese carmaker Xpeng saw a 3.6% surge after announcing impressive pre-orders for its newly launched electric vehicle model. Meanwhile, Nio also rose 5.8% after slashing prices on all its models in mainland China.
• Property developers also got a taste of the action. Longfor Group took a leap of 3.5%, while Country Garden saw a 4.8% jump. New World Development also climbed 1.2%.

👀The numbers everyone is watching:

• In the US: The latest consumer price index (CPI) only rose by 0.1% last month, taking a breather after the 0.4% ride in April. Core inflation, which strips out the wobbly bits, held steady at 0.4%.
• In Hong Kong: The People's Bank of China (PBOC) slashed the seven-day reverse repurchase rate by 10 basis points. Picture it as a financial turbo boost injecting 2 billion Chinese yuan (US$279.97 million) through its seven-day repos, revving up the economy.

📅To check out our economic calendar for this week, click here.

More headlines ...

🌀Cyclone approaches Pakistan and India: Cyclone Biparjoy has been forecast to hit India and Pakistan on Thursday, and it’s looking like a powerful storm. Pakistan is evacuating 80,000 people from the areas in the most danger. In the Gujarat state of India, 20,580 people have already been moved to “relief camps” where their needs will be provided for, but more people may have to be evacuated before it hits.

🤝Germany, France and Poland back Ukraine counteroffensive: President Zelenskiy has been pushing for more international support for Ukraine, which just began its latest counteroffensive against Russia. In Paris on Monday, the leaders of France, Germany and Poland agreed to throw more military support behind Ukraine. This includes providing more weapons and ammunition.

👰Marriage rates drop in China: China is experiencing a birthrate decline that the government is trying to slow down and (eventually) reverse. According to recent data, last year, China had only 6.8 million marriages, which is its lowest marriage rate in almost 40 years and down 11% from 2021. Most babies in China are still born within marriages, so this isn’t great news for the country’s birthrate.

🥵El Niño patterns could mean the hottest year on record: The El Niño weather pattern is when waters in the Pacific Ocean become much warmer than usual, and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced on Thursday that it’s just getting started. This could mean a warmer year on average overall, as a strong El Niño normally leads to higher temps globally. We could even potentially see the hottest year on record in the next year or so, according to experts

💻Former Twitter CEO Dorsey accuses India: On Monday, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey said in an interview on YouTube that India had threatened to shut down Twitter in the country if it didn’t restrict certain accounts that criticized how the government handled farmers’ protests. He also said the government threatened to raid Twitter’s staff. Top Indian officials responded, saying this was an “outright lie” and that Twitter had trouble accepting and complying with Indian law. Dorsey also said there were similar pressures on the platform from the governments in Nigeria and Turkey.

📚RIP Cormac McCarthy: Cormac McCarthy, one of the most acclaimed American writers of all time, has passed away at the age of 89 at his home in Sante Fe, New Mexico. McCarthy was a prolific writer whose works have been turned into award-winning films, including “No Country for Old Men” and “The Road.” An extremely private man, Cormac rarely appeared in public. His last works, two companion novels about siblings, were released in 2022, a whopping 16 years after writing his Pulitzer-prize-winning previous novel, “The Road.”

🎒Chinese research universities: China has been in steep competition with other countries in nearly every industry, but it looks like China has a win when it comes to university research. Rankings based on published scientific papers show that seven of the top 10 university contributors were from China. This includes the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) taking some of the top spots.

💻Meta’s “human-like” AI: Meta said on Tuesday that it was looking to start giving researchers access to parts of a new "human-like" AI it’s developed. The company said the AI model can analyze and complete unfinished images more accurately than existing models. Basically, it uses background knowledge about the world to fill in missing pieces of images rather than just looking at nearby pixels and guessing as other AI tools do.This human-like reasoning helps the image creator avoid those weird tendencies of other AI models where, in the final image, someone’s face looks odd, or there are too many fingers.

🤑YouTube is lowering its monetization requirements: Through the YouTube Partner Program, creators can monetize their videos. YouTube used to open up the program for anyone with at least 1,000 subscribers. Now, the eligibility requirement is being lowered so anyone with at least 500 subscribers can start bringing in revenue on their videos through monetization methods like paid chat, tipping, channel memberships and shopping features. All of this is coming not long after Twitch almost pushed out a huge portion of streamers after rolling out some pretty rough monetization changes, and it looks like YouTube is jumping on the opportunity.

🍸This is your brain on booze: Studies have shown for years that people who consume small amounts of alcohol tend to have a lower risk of things like heart attacks and strokes. Now, scientists are saying they’ve pinpointed just how light drinking can help relieve stress, which is good for heart health. Alcohol does still pose health risks when drinking in any capacity, so they aren’t suggesting people pick up the habit. But this new knowledge will help researchers understand heart and brain health more and possibly find healthier alternatives to create the same stress-relieving effects.

😲Nearly buried alive: During her own wake, a 76-year-old woman in Ecuador woke up inside her coffin, knocking on the inside until mourners realized she was actually still alive. She’d been declared dead at a hospital but definitely wasn’t. Mourners quickly called emergency services to get her back to a hospital, and now an investigation is going forward to find out how this happened. We’re confident to say that this is just about everyone’s worst nightmare.

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Written and put together by Joey Fung, Vanessa Wolosz, Caleb Moll and Christine Dulion